


stuck on the puzzle

by gottagofast



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Implied Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori, Love at First Sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gottagofast/pseuds/gottagofast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Distantly he realizes that this is what a schoolboy crush looks like on a 27 year old pilot</p>
            </blockquote>





	stuck on the puzzle

Raleigh doesn't believe in love at first sight.

 

It's not a definite opinion that he even realizes he had, it's not like he woke up one day and thought 'I will never look at somebody and know that we belong'. No, it had just never occurred to him, not when romantic relationships of any kind weren't even within the realm of possibilities. He wasn't _opposed_ to love, it was just a luxury he'd thought he couldn't afford in a world where even surviving was a commodity.

 

He'd had his bedmates. Lust at first sight was something he recognized and something he realized later was infinitely less fragile and complicated than loving somebody on sight. Walking into a room, he knew what the tug in his gut meant at the sight of a silhouette that tapers and flares, a flat stomach and dark eyes. Girls he met in bars at the latest port who would bring him back to her place and wear him down until he came so hard he saw white, but nobody he fell asleep next to after and nobody he kissed on the cheek the next morning, standing on the doorstep, on the way to meet death on his. 

 

Raleigh never thought about loving anybody but his brother and his job, and nobody ever gave him a reason too. and Raleigh steps off that helicopter the exact same person he was five years ago, the echo of somebody who is cocksure and full of life, a still photograph thats been left out in the sun.

 

It is blue and wet and cold outside and he can already feel himself hating it, stuck reliving that day years ago, everyday. He notices the small figure standing still and solid amongst the bustle of workers, curiously, with a detached sense of resignation. somebody to meet, another on a long list of things he will probably have to do, and then she lifts her umbrella and something inside Raleigh knits itself back together.

 

He can tell how important this moment is, how everything seems to slow down and speed up at the same time. The colours are brighter, everything louder and he is ridiculously aware of his own body. He notices things - the bow of her top lip, how she grips the umbrella tight and how she gives away nothing in her expression except a sense of unease. He looks at her and he wants badly to ask if she had felt it to, the shift in her chest, the steadying of her pulse, but Pentecost is standing there and there is a crack in the world that is slowly rending itself apart beneath their feet, so he stays quiet out of mute shock.

 

He is angry for a moment when he realizes that something in himself has just come together when the rest of the world seems ready to fall to pieces.

 

He starts to come back to himself after a few seconds, but the feeling won't go away entirely - the last five years could've been the last two days or the last million decades and he wouldn't have known the difference, like he had dropped out of time after Yancy died and now this second has pulled him back.

 

She says she imagined him differently and out of the corner of his eye he thinks he sees Pentecost's mouth twitch but then its gone and he's just overwhelmingly grateful that Yancy had made him study the language when they'd finally been posted long term in Hong Kong Bay. It's not impertinence that keeps him from respectfully averting his eyes from her in front of Pentecost, only the same feeling from before, like this is too important to miss. 

 

Distantly he realizes that this is what a schoolboy crush looks like on a 27 year old pilot and closer to home he knows that, while he might not care, it was very possible that she might so he makes a conscious effort to keep himself from mooning too much.

 

Until he hears her simulator score, and thats when he gives up entirely.

 

* * *

 

A faint warning had gone off in the back of his head at Pentecosts stony silence, the same silence he would later understand to be a military trained coping mechanism, the hardcore version of 'if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all'. But it got Mako out on the mat, and instead of curling herself around her tablet and bowing her head at passing pilots in the halls, she held her body like a honed weapon striking at the pauses between the things his body said. 

 

By the time she had him pinned, 4 for 3, he was half hard and flushed underneath his patchy tan. He put his hand on her lower back, any excuse to touch her again. It didn't matter now, he wouldn't be able to look at her again without seeing her kneeling above him, body taught and completely in control. He has never seen something so completely erotic as Mako kicking his ass, completely confident in her ability to do it.

 

* * *

 

He'd known it would be impossible to try to explain what she would see in the drift. A lot of pain mostly, not a lot of anger, but fear in spades on his part. He hadn't harboured any hope that she also wouldn't see exactly what he felt when he looked at her, not that it embarrassed him any (she was incredible and awe inspiring and he felt no shame in being completely reverent of her; it was an indisputable fact by now), but he was afraid of making her uncomfortable at the attention and the immediate depth of his feelings. 

 

He doesn't have time to process what he sees before she is chasing the rabbit, and the aftermath is too loud and too chaotic to sort through what he knows about her now. The next morning though, he wakes up early and lies in his bed for a minute, allowing himself a small selfish smile at the knowledge that he was not alone in feeling the world stop spinning for just a minute.

 

In the mess hall the next morning, when it is still quiet and half empty, he and Mako sit together and she lets her ankle rest against his under the table, smiling the same soft smile he'd worn a few hours earlier.

 

Neither of them feel alone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> oh my goodness, i wrote this immediately after i saw the movie and i never posted it because i kept putting it off to edit the mistakes and then forgot. ive seen this movie so many times its my favourite movie on earth oh my gosh <3
> 
> (i know they dont eat in the mess the next morning but w/e)
> 
> the song has nothing to do with the fic, i just couldnt think of a title


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